Question NW105 to the Minister of Home Affairs

Reply:

a) (i) The standard processing time for South Africans applying for passports at foreign missions is six (6) months on fully completed application submission at the Mission or Embassy. Furthermore, on receipt of application at Passports Section: Head Office, it takes twenty four (24) working days to process a manual application for a passport and,

The reason for the time lines from the Missions and Embassies can be clarified by DIRCO in relation to Diplomatic Bags. However, the twenty four days on manual applications processing is due to the processes involved which includes amongst others, determination of citizenship status, capturing of application, positive identification verification and other passport processes.

(ii) The turnaround time for an ID is fifty four working days for first issues of identity documents and forty seven working days for re-issues of identity documents.

(b) The processing times for identity documents are influenced by the manual nature of the issuing process and in the case of first issues of identity documents, the turnaround time is also dependent on the submission of the prescribed supporting documents by the applicant.

(iii). The standard processing time for South Africans applying for a Births, Marriages, Deaths Certificates, amendment of personal details and application for the registration of births by South African Citizens in foreign missions is 8 weeks at Head Office however, the entire process from the time the application is lodged at the Foreign Missions is (6) Six months.

(b) The reasons for these processing times are based on the study conducted to map out how documents gets completed and processed from office of application to head office, as well as what it takes to process such applications at head office to finalise the cases.